"Piano"-D.H. Lawrence

I chose to address the sounds and rhythms of D.H. Lawrence’s poem, "Piano". Right at the start, the title itself is a strong source of imagery for our senses. We know what a piano sounds like, what it looks like, and mostly what it feels like. I am a pianist and I understand what Lawrence is talking about here. The piano has the power to take you back to a special moment in your past. It can also propell you into the uture causeing you to dream about things you wish you had or are working for. A well-played piano can invoke the mind to engage in the musice or wander amelessly and pleasureably through a daydream. There are a few rhetorical devices in use. An occurance of consonance can be found in line 3, “tingling strings”, which expresses a sense of the sounds a piano makes. Not only to the strings inside the instrument vibreate or “tingle”, but the music is sometimes so beautiful that the listener begins to tingle as well. I appreciate that the lines are written in sentences. They are almost like phrases of music that can rap around in to the next measure. The lyrics of this poem do not stop at the end of the line, but rather with the punctuation given. As in music, vocal or instrumental, you breathe where the music tells to breathe, you pause or continue as the music fortells. Every beat is accounted for along the bars and staffs. I like the AABB rhyme scheme. It makes the piece easy to delve into. Some people find it difficult to read poems that should be read using the punctuation for breaks. But with a generally easy rhyme scheme, like Lawrence has used here, the rhyme is natural and flowing. Lastly, I think the poems rhythm is important to its tone. Like I said, the lines read like a song…a song of rememberence. The speaker is looking back onto an easier time, a fonder moment than wherever he is now. Since the rhythm is melodic, it brings a sense of longing and desire.